Russia 'meddled in all big social media' in US election, says report

Russia allegedly used every major social media platform to influence the 2016 US election, a report claims. The report was put together by University of Oxford's Computational Propaganda Project and the social network analysis firm Graphika. The report suggests YouTube, Tumblr, Pinterest and Google+ were all affected, as well as email services including Google's Gmail, Microsoft's Hotmail and Yahoo. The report says Russia had a particular focus on targeting conservatives with posts on immigration, race and gun rights. "Social media have gone from being the natural infrastructure for sharing collective grievances and co-ordinating civic engagement, to being a computational tool for social control, manipulated by canny political consultants and available to politicians in democracies and dictatorships alike," the report says.